Demographic variables and personality: The effects of gender, age, education, and ethnic/racial status on self-descriptions of personality attributes

Using a large (N = 3629) sample of individuals selected to be representative of U.S. working adults in the year 2000, we provide the correlations between each of four demographic variables (gender, age, ethnic/racial status, and educational level) and each of the dimensions from two quite different five-variable representations of personality traits. Across the four demographic variables and the five personality dimensions, we find average correlations of 0.08 with the Big-Five factors and 0.10 with the AVA vectors. Although most of the demographic-personality associations are of trivial size, two are somewhat stronger: older persons tend to describe themselves as more conscientious than younger ones, and persons with higher levels of education describe themselves as more intellectual than those with less education. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.